Kosher Eucharist / יוקאריסט כשר

The psychologists, an ever-growing group of overpaid people who hover just above sarcastic, buzzing (buzzed?) gadflies on the “usefulness” scale, have struck again. They’ve done what they do best: shone a handsomely-funded spotlight on a social issue already as well-illuminated as the planet Mercury. Let’s discover together:

Today’s college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors, according to a comprehensive new study by five psychologists who worry that the trend could be harmful to personal relationships and American society.

“We need to stop endlessly repeating ‘You’re special’ and having children repeat that back,” said the study’s lead author, Professor Jean Twenge of San Diego State University. “Kids are self-centered enough already.”

Twenge and her colleagues, in findings to be presented at a workshop Tuesday in San Diego on the generation gap, examined the responses of 16,475 college students nationwide who completed an evaluation called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory between 1982 and 2006.

Professor Jean Twenge, come over here right now and let me pleasure you. I don’t care that you’re a psychologist and doubtless dry like sandpaper down there. I’ll make you twenge like a 15-year-old girl whose boyfriend has just discovered the clitoris. I owe it to you, for you have shown me my calling.

You’re right, Professor Jean Twenge, we need to stop endlessly repeating “You’re special.” In fact, the scourge of unqualified specialness already gone so far that we must desperately attempt to shore up the bulkheads against a flood of boundless self-love by employing large-scale, persistent degradation. Especially when they’re young. And I am just the man for the job. Put me in America’s kindergartens – I’ll nip this in the bud!

“Mommy says I’m special!”
“Well, Billy, the next time Mommy tells you that, watch her and see if she goes into the den and drinks from the bottle of ‘mommy’s special juice.’ And then ask her if she loves ‘post-partum depression.’ It’s a grown-up way of saying ‘candy’!”

“I heard that everybody is beautiful on the inside!”
“That’s just what people tell themselves to stave off suicide, honey.”

“My daddy said I can be anything I want to be!”
“Well, sometimes daddies fudge a little…and judging from your last spelling test and penmanship handbook, I’d say daddy fudged a lot. Tell me, sweetie, what color is the collar on this Raggedy Andy doll?”
“Ooh! Ooh! I know! Blue!”
“Correct! Get to used it, because you’ll be seeing it on all the men in your future…”

But in all seriousness, Professor Jean Twenge, you’re giving narcissism a bad rap. The problem is not narcissism itself, it’s simply that most narcissists themselves are completely unworthy of the abundant love they bestow upon themselves. Most narcissists are just having pity sex with their personalities, personalities which are fundamentally undeserving of attention.

But there’s a way to solve this problem, Professor Jean Twenge. Take it from a narcissist like me. The best way to keep narcissism from destroying the society we all so dearly love is to temper it with an equal dose of self-loathing. To illustrate with an example that is absolutely in no way at all derived from my own personal life: the ideal is for the narcissist to look at the face in the mirror and be paralyzed by his conflicting urges to smash it and furiously make out with it. We cannot wipe out narcissism – because let’s face it, Jean, in certain cases narcissism is entirely justified – but we can cripple it. America – nay, the world – is counting on us.